A pre-code film that sneaked onto screens just as the censorious Hays Office
began cracking down on Hollywood's racier propositions, Cleopatra is a libertine
paean to decadence and depravity that can still send a viewer's mind reeling and
pulse thumping - all courtesy of the Golden Age's swampiest psychosexual auteur,
Cecil B. DeMille ( The Ten Commandments; The Greatest Show on Earth; The King of
Kings).

Claudette Colbert ( It Happened One Night; The Palm Beach Story; Drums Along the
Mohawk) presides over the most outrageous spectacle this side of The Scarlet
Empress as the eponymous pharaoh queen who speeds from Julius Caesar (Warren
William) to Marc Antony (Henry Wilcoxon), from Egypt to Rome, from war-room to
bedroom... The whiff of incense permeates every scene, with each connected to
the next in a veritable matrix of whips, blindfolds, and bindings - the crazed
arrangement laying bare all the fetish inklings of the moving-picture dream.

Lavishly produced with some of the most inspired waxing-moon photography and
unwholesome set-design to come out of the studio system, DeMille's film is an
erotic tour-de-force that obliges us to re-examine the appeal of this most
popular of Hollywood directors. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present
Cleopatra for the very first time on DVD.

HD transfer of the film officially licensed from Universal and presented in its original aspect ratio, Optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, Original theatrical trailer, Lavish booklet featuring the words of Cecil B. DeMille, rare archival imagery, and more